umphed over the magnanimous Dun Was ever knight for ladye's sake, This ladye, ladye-like, put her lover to much trouble, and compelled him to many difficulties before she would look favourably upon him. For her, he killed" a bore of passing might and strength," near Windsor, and his bones are yet somewhere in Warwick Castle. Sir Guy says, that he returned from all his dangers, and died with Phillis at Warwick Castle, and we must give credence to the words of a dead man. The porter at the gate of the castle, as you go out, checks you for a few minutes to show you the cauldron, the flesh-fork, the spear, &c. of the renowned Sir Guy; and you go away convinced that he was a real hero, and thus give him an advantage over many other he roes. I have thus" said my say." I have conducted the reader safely over the castle and the park; and wishing him goodly rest after his fatigues, and praying that he will, if I have proved a tedious guide, forgive me for the true wish I had to please him with what has pleased me- - I take my leave in fair humility. Should my description fail of interest, I pray the reader not to be discouraged, but to go the first fair summer, and banquet his imagination in the baronial halls of Warwick Castle. ON GRAY'S OPINION OF COLLINS, I HAVE often felt a strong desire to know what men of genius, who have lived in the same age and country, have thought of one another. It is a curiosity, that, as ill fortune will have it, does not stand much chance of being gratified. For whatever opinions they have recorded on this subject in their published writings, we may generally suspect of having been influenced either by personal partiality on the one hand, or a spirit of rivalry on the other. There remain only their letters to friends, in which they may happen to have declared their undisguised sentiments, or such casual hints as have dropped from them in familiar conversation, and been preserved by the zeal of biographers and writers of memoirs. It is from the latter source we collect that Milton thought of Dryden as little more than a man of rhyme, and that he highly esteemed the poetical abilities of Cowley. Posterity has not ratified the award; for it is probable that where Cowley has now reader, Dryden might reckon not fewer than ten. It should be added, however, that the author of Paradise Lost did not live to witness the last effort of Dryden, his Fables, in which, though the produce of his one old age, his imagination is more exuberant than it had before been. In the letters of Gray, certainly never intended to see the light, there are many passages, in which, without the slightest reserve, he passes sentence on the merits of his contemporaries; and as he was entirely free from that esprit du corps, to which authors are to the full as liable as any other description of mortals, and always strictly maintained the character of a dilettante, no more concerned in the petty jealousies and factions of his poetical brethren, than the gods of Epicurus in the affairs of this lower world; there is no reason to suppose that his mind was under any bias on these occasions. In the earlier part of his life he met with Southern, the dramatic writer, who was then seventyseven years old, and whose memory had nearly deserted him. With the enthusiasm, natural to a young mind, Gray found him " as agreeable as an old man could be, or at least persuaded himself so, when he looked at him, and thought of Oroonoko and Isabella." Some years afterwards we find him speaking his mind very freely on Akenside's Pleasures of Imagination; then just published according to its first model. " I On Gray's Opinion of Collins. will tell you," says he to Doctor Of Thomson's Castle of Indolence, when that poem, so worthy of the author of the Seasons, first made its appearance, he contented himself with saying very coldly, that " it had some good stanzas in it." But as he grew older, his reluctance to be pleased increased. "Dodsley's two last volumes were worse than his four first, and particularly Dr. Akenside was in a deplorable way." To the excellence of Sterne, who, perhaps on the whole, may be considered as the most original writer of his day, he was, however, still alive; and even thought his sermons, "in the style most proper for the pulpit," as they were marked by "a strong imagination and a sensible heart; but you see him often tottering on the verge of laughter, and ready to throw his periwig in the face of his audience." Cowper has since put this mode of pulpit oratory, which indeed was somewhat too much in Friar Gerund's taste, entirely out of countenance; and will allow no preacher to be merry, till he can discover a jest in St. Paul's Epistles for his text. With the humour of the Bath Guide, where, to say the truth, humour was more in its place, Gray was not less de [July, lighted, and pronounced it to be Lyttleton, Matthew Green, the au"of a new and original kind." thor of the Spleen, Of Schoolmistress, Johnson's London, - Shenstone's -Dyer,—and several of the "Poeta he has past a tolerably fair judgeMinimi" in Dodsley's Miscellany, Lowth,) in two of the letters to ment, (with the exception perhaps of Walpole. his feelings with respect to a writer, But what was his opinion, what who in the eyes of the next generation, was to be regarded as his rival, and either to contest or share with him the supremacy of the lyre?Had the name of Collins escaped him, or did he think it fit to be past pointing out to his friends, so many over in silence, when he was thus writers-good, bad, and indifferentthe character of Collins of too high among their contemporaries ?-Was estimate on its first appearance? or a species even for Gray himself to faults to attend to the beauties? was he too much disgusted with its could never satisfactorily solve, till, These were questions, which I happily for my peace of mind, some few years back Mr. Mitford gave the world those parts of Gray's correspondence with Dr. Wharton, which had been omitted by Mason. Guess, perfect non-conductor to this kind reader! if thou art not thyself a singly it glided through me, when of fluid, guess,-I say, how pleathe following paragraph presented itself to my view:-" Have you seen the works of two young authors, a Mr. Warton* and a Mr. Collins, enough that each is the half of a reboth writers of Odes? It is odd markable man, and one the counterpart of the other. The first has but little invention, very poetical choice second a fine fancy, modelled upon of expression, and a good ear. The the antique, a bad ear, great variety of words and images with no choice at all. They both deserve to last some years, but will not." So then scriptive and allegorical, which had one of the few copies of the odes, degot abroad before their author, in his indignation at the cold reception The Warton here spoken of is Joseph, the elder brother, whose Odes were published about December 1746, the time when this letter was written. Of Thomas, the younger, it is probable Gray thought much more highly. given them by the public, committed the remainder to the flames, fell into the hands of Gray. How much it is to be regretted that poor Collins did not know the favourable sentence, but without the ill-boding and falsified prediction that was attached to it, passed upon them by so competent a judge. "A fine fancy modelled upon the antique! great variety of words and images." Such praise as this, and from one who was himself to bear the proud title of Britain's Pindar, among the sepulchres of her poets! It might have been enough, if he could have known all, not only to encourage the writer, then in the "morn and liquid dew" of his youth, to put forth new and yet more beautiful blossoms, but to have saved him from that fatal "blastment,' which not long afterwards blighted and withered the whole plant. Seldom has there been an instance of more just and appropriate criticism conveyed ir so few words. it was indeed" a nine fancy, modelled upon the antique," so that an Englishman, who would form some conception of the lyrical parts of the Greek tragedians, and particularly Euripides, without going to the original sources, has nothing to do but to take up the Odes of Collins, and he will meet with as true a likeness of them as his own language can supply. He has not, like Gray or Chiabrera, taken entire pieces out of the ancients, and stuck them among his own workmanship. He does not -Talk in a high sounding strain of the stars, Of the eagle of Jove, and the chariot of Mars; but he fills himself with the divinity, which breathes from their labours, and then goes home and works in the spirit that he has caught. It is for this reason, I suppose, that we have no editions of Collins, favourite as he is amongst us, stuffed with parallel passages from the bottom of the page, that sometimes rise so high as scarcely to leave room for the text to float on over their surface. We easily discover to what land he has traveled, as the pilgrims in the middle ages showed they had visited the Holy Sepulchre by the palm that was wreathed round their staff; but he brings home with him no relics to make a display of, no nails drawn out of the crosses of martyrs, no dry bones pilfered from tombs of Apostles and Saints. The opening of his "Ode to Liberty," to which we have scarcely any thing that is equal in its way, reminds us, it is true, of the be ginning of a noble chorus in the Iphigenia at Aulis of Euripides, v. 1036; but it is merely in the manner, with which the music strikes up in each. Who shall awake the Spartan fife? I could not be quite so sure in what follows, that he had not lately been reading Statius; though it is likely, that if he had, the images only remained in his mind, unaccompanied by any consciousness of the quarter from whence they came. And call in solemn sounds to life Applauding Freedom loved of old to view! Cum Venus ante ipsos nulla formidine gressum, Fixit equos; cessere retro, jamjamque rigentes Suppliciter posuere jugo.-Theb. 1. iii. 265. But it is not only on the banks of the Ilissus, or the Tyber, that Collins has left us tidings of himself; we may sometimes hear notes from him that he has caught in other fields. Thus, in his Ode on the Poetical Character, I view that oak the fancy'd glades among, From many a cloud that dropp'd ethereal dew, Nigh spher'd in heaven, its native strains could hear, On which that ancient trump he reach'd was hung. we are reminded of an Italian wri ter, Angiolo Costanzo, in one of those sonnets which the historian of their poetry has called the " Ideal of good sonneting." It is a little presumptuous to be sure; but, for the sake of our subject, 1 will venture on a translation of the one in question, Quella cetra gentil, &c. The harp, that whilom on the reedy shore Such strains, as never haply, or before Or sithence, mid the mountain cliffs have rung Of Mænalus, or on Lycæus hoar; And sounded next, to bolder music strung, The gifts of Pales, and what perils bore, What toils achiev'd, that Phrygian goddess-sprung,— Now on an aged oak, making the gloom More awful, hangs; where, if the wind have stirr'd, As to what Gray has said of "the bad ear" of Collins, and "the no choice at all of his words and images;" the latter, as far as the imagery is concerned, is plainly inconsistent with the praise he has bestowed on him. For his want of ear, the same charge has been brought against him by Johnson, who tells us that "his lines commonly are of slow motion, clogged and impeded with clusters of consonants;" so I suppose there is an end of the matter; though I would fain put in a word on his behalf even on this point. Thomas Warton pronounced the same judgment on Milton, but has surely merited the punishment of Midas for his pains. NOEMON. SONNET. (MILTON VISITS GALILEO IN PRISON.) Come thou and view the pale moon from thy hills; B. THE HEROES OF NAPLES. A NEW BALLAD. He who in battle runs away, AT Naples, the folks Than of bayonet, musquet, or powder; And resolved to be free, Wax'd, day by day, fiercer and prouder. The army first ran To arms, and each man Was talk'd of, as pastime inviting; Ate no macaroni,— No stomach had they but for fighting. They hurl'd hot defiance Term'd Holy-(religion to slander); To Frederick,-Francis,— Fierce Filangieri Bade Frimont be wary, Or he soon should have bullets for grey pills: "I'll dig for our foes-a Grave on the frontiers of Naples." Pepe, swearing an oath, For he vow'd-when he pull'd on his boots -he Of the Austrian force, In the passes they call the Abruzzi. By his language and air, Was a sort of a Cromwell-Protector; Each man was Achilles or Hector. Those coal-heaving Bruti, Carbonari, men sooty, Swore deeply (as most of that trade do) The poor Austrian souls, And their Teutonic hides carbonado. |